Youth Radio covers sexual health issues

Youth Radio offers media training to youth ages 14-17 to promote young people's intellectual and creative growth. Involved youth have access to industry professionals and get to participate in the production of award winning programming.

Youth Radio programming covers just about everything of interest to young adults. Here is a small taste of some of their STD, HIV and Sex Ed programming.

Get Tested

Shooting Down HPV

Latinos and AIDS

Changing the Course of Sex Education

To get involved as a youth check out these options.
To learn about supporting Youth Radio and their new expanded offices check out the Support Us page. A $200 donation provides field staff with recording equipment, and $50 provides teachers with supplies for after school tutoring.

Stay tuned to find out how Youth Radio may work with ISIS to report on the Sex::Tech conference.

Deb rocks on Real Life Real Talk radio

Deb Levine, ISIS Executive Director and founder, joined Real Life Real Talk yesterday for a radio interview. Check out Deb as she talks about ISIS' growth, inSPOT expansion, issues with verifying sex information online, and about the upcoming Sex::Tech conference and Fresh Focus Video Contest.

Check it out here. Go Deb!

Fresh Focus: Sex Ed Video Contest has launched!

Internet Sexuality Information Services and RH Reality Check in conjunction with Dogooder.tv present the Fresh Focus: Sex Ed Video Contest. You could win a $3500 scholarship or cash equivalent just for making a video about sex! Videos -3 minutes tops- should be submitted to DoGooder.tv by December 31st, 2007 and should follow one of two contest themes:

Theme 1: Share your sex ed experience so far. Show us how and why it sucked or rocked.

Theme 2: Redesign how sex ed could be delivered. Imagine that anything is possible.

Voting will begin on January 4th. The winning videos will premier at the Sex::Tech Conference: Focus on Youth, taking place January 22-23, 2008 at SFSU's Institute for Next Generation Internet in San Francisco to an audience of health professionals, youth activists, educators and tech wizards!

First place wins a $3500 scholarship to the educational institution of your choice (or cash equivalent) and a free trip to San Francisco to attend the conference; second place wins $1000 cash; and third prize is your choice of a Nikon P5000, a Nintendo Wii or an iPhone. Content and creative vision will be weighed more heavily than production quality. Film makers must be between the ages of 15-30. See the official rules for more details.

Check out our contest partners:
Advocates For Youth
ISIS-Inc
RH Reality Check
NSRC
SIECUS

Snag the press release HERE.

Free (and informative) geek rags - from the CDC

A little known fact is that MMWR (CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) is free and you can sign up and have it sent to your inbox every week!

It sounds morbid, yes, but it is a great resource, with links to full length articles, podcasts and delicious statistics. So it doesn't always have sexual health related articles. An sample of what came this week:
"QuickStats: Death rates from poisoning, By State, United States 2004"
OR
"Ocular and Respiratory Illnesses Associated with an Indoor Swimming Pool, Nebraska 2006"

But several weeks back was this gem:
"QuickStats: Percentage of Adults aged >18 Years Who Reported Ever Being Tested for Human Immuno Deficiency Virus..."

To sign up for your free subscription, just name and email needed, go here.

Now, if you're really into infectious diseases (like me), you might want to read Emerging Infectious Diseases. This is also a free CDC publication and you can have it sent to your house in full glossy glory. Sign up here.

I look forward to it every month.

OKcupid - quiz mania

So I randomly took an OKCupid quiz the other day. And after that I took another and another -- very addicting. The cool part is that after you take one, you can see other people who have taken them as well, their profiles on OKCupid, etc. So here it is in all it's glory, The Dating Personality Test.

The result you ask? I'm The Bachelor. The Deliberate Gentle Sex Master (DGSM). My exact dating opposite is appropriately "The Manchild," of the Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLD).

Some sample questions include:
"Would you rather get caught masturbating by your mother or your father?"
OR
"You're in a serious, loving relationship, and your mate asks for a threesome. You are more...
Offended?
Relieved?

There is also a "The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test." I'm a pure nerd. See isn't this fun?

Online Dating Insider provides a closer look at the quiz algorithm and question asking philosophy, which yes you guessed it, is much different from eHarmony's. OkCupid is also developing a new app for Facebook which will no doubt multiply their marketing potential.

Safe Sex Fridays - Your own baby unicorn

So, first I will thank Boingboing and the Second Life Herald for handing me the perfect Safe Sex Fridays tidbit of silliness. In Safe Sex Fridays I like to give a little example of something sex related, that you may not have seen/wanted to see before, and that's safe. One time I shared some videos of people dry humping couches and another time I told you about the Masturbate-a-thon.

Now you can have your very own baby unicorn in Second Life, BUT you have to have sex with an adult unicorn (which is really not safe in real life, and actually might not even be fun virtually).

But aren't they cute? For the birds and the bees diagrams go here. The comment thread on the Herald article reeks of disapproval, which is interesting to see given that Second Life is one of the only places available to have sex with a unicorn (if you so choose).

Manhunt places official badges on health profiles

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Gov't attack on adult social networking freedoms!

The following is a partial repost from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

The federal government is proposing regulations that would effectively kill adult social-networking sites. This is being done under the guise of fighting child pornography. You have until September 10 to object to these regulations. It’s easy to do and essential. A sample e-mail comment is at the bottom of this page. Please forward this information to your friends!
What’s the Deal?

The Department of Justice is proposing regulations to implement a federal law designed to combat child pornography, known as Section 2257. The law was first enacted in 1998 and was amended in 2006 and significantly expanded to include regulation of the Internet.

While many of the regulations pertain to companies that produce adult entertainment magazines and videos (and are extremely burdensome), they would also affect anyone who uses an adult social-networking site. Here’s how:

* The regulations would require the people running a site to get and maintain personal information from every user (that means you) who posts a “sexually explicit” photo, including your photo ID (driver’s license, passport, or military ID).
* The regulations would allow the Attorney General to conduct warrantless searches at will on the sites’ records, including your personal information.
* There are few safeguards over what the FBI can do with the information it obtains.
* If a site operator fails to comply with the regulations, he or she would face a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
* For more detailed information on Sec. 2257, go to the task force fact sheet.

Obviously, none of this has anything to do with child pornography. Instead, it is a blatant attempt to end the ability of consenting adults to use adult social-networking sites to meet other people for sex. Obviously, if these regulations go into effect, they will kill this industry.
What You Can Do

The Department of Justice has published these proposed regulations and the public has until September 10 to comment on them.

We need to generate thousands of comments objecting to the proposed regulations – and it’s easy to do via e-mail. Just follow the instructions below...
____________________

A sample letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Justice is provided on the bottom of this link. The fact that the Justice Dept. can't handle increasing the prison population will hopefully save us from this grand save-the-children idea. Jeeez, what next? You can always join Playboy's new social networking site (college only) that surprisingly shows little skin.